LIVE! Bharat Ratna to Tendulkar a big mistake: Uma Bharti

In his first interaction with a visiting foreign dignitary, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tonight met German President Joachim Guack during which issues ranging from Jan Lokpal Bill and AAP's plan for coming Lok Sabha elections were believed to have figured.

It is understood that the President wanted to know about Kejriwal's and his party's views on various issues during the 25-minute meeting.

"This was a formal meeting with the German President," Kejriwal told PTI after the meeting at the German Embassy in Delhi.

Sources said Gauck wanted to know about AAP government's policies and Kejriwal's stand on various issues.

Later, Kejriwal responded to queries of diplomats from different countries on issues ranging from Jan Lokpal, corruption and his party's plan for Lok Sabha elections.

Guack had yesterday held talks with the top leadership, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, here on the first day of his state visit which was highlighted by inking of two pacts under which Germany will provide loans worth 900 million Euros to India.

The President is accompanied by a high-ranking delegation comprising, among others, representatives of the German cabinet, Parliament and business.

Reliance Infra-backed BSES discoms today sought Rs 450 crore "dues" from Delhi government and MCDs to overcome their immediate "financial difficulties" and avoid black outs in 70 per cent areas even as the AAP dispensation maintained it will not adopt a "lenient" approach in dealing with the firms.

In letter, the BSES discoms asked the government to pay Rs 262 crore of subsidy due to them, saying the amount would help them clear the outstandings to state-run power generator NTPC. BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd and BSES Yamuna Power Ltd said if

NTPC goes ahead with the threat of cut in power supply, then there will be almost 100 per cent loadshedding in their areas

of operation except in hospitals and Delhi Metro from Monday evening.

BSES discoms supply power in 70 per cent areas here.

The Delhi government has already made it clear that it will not pay the subsidy dues to BSES discoms and will adjust the amount with their outstanding to Delhi government-run power generation and transmission companies.

BRPL and BYPL owe around Rs 4,000 crore to Delhi government-run power generation and transmission utilities.

More than 2,000 people were evacuated and roads closed in central Hong Kong today after a World War II bomb weighing almost a tonne was discovered on a construction site, police said.

The giant US Navy bomb was found by workers in the upscale Happy Valley district- home to Hong Kong's famous horse racing track.

An officer at the scene said bomb disposal experts would need several hours to remove the explosives from the bomb casing.

"If it went off accidentally it would cause serious damage. Buildings could collapse," Yuen Hon-wing, a senior bomb disposal officer at the scene, told reporters. "Residents in the area, including guests from hotels, have been evacuated. Some roads are temporarily closed," a police spokeswoman said.

Clearing the air over its stand on Telangana issue, BJP today said its commitment to the statehood cause was "full and final". BJP President Rajnath Singh conveyed this to TRS Chief K Chandrasekhar Rao who met him at his residence here, party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told reporters in New Delhi.

"Our commitment is full and final. We will get Telangana," he said. Javadekar said the BJP chief had explained about the "double game" played by Congress party on the statehood bill.

"Congress is playing double game, double politics...They are not friends of Telangana and they are not friends of Seemandhra either," he alleged. Congress did not have any ideological commitment towards the issue, he charged.

He said Congress did not initiate any action against Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy who had participated in a dharna here yesterday against the bifurcation move.

Using government's denial, BJP today attacked Rahul Gandhi accusing him of spreading "falsehood" about Muzaffarnagar riot-hit victims being contacted by Pakistan's ISI and demanded an explanation from him.

"What Rahul Gandhi was saying was absolute falsehood. This falsehood is the hallmark of the Congress party...He owes an explanation to the nation and to the media. He must tell now and must explain explain why he resorted to this falsehood," BJP Spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said.

He said the "falsehood of Rahul Gandhi stands exposed today" as the government in its written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha stated there was no input suggesting that Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI had contacted victims of riots in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh.

18:43Marines are 'neither terrorists nor pirates': Italy's FM: The two Italian marines facing trial in India over the killing of two Indian fishermen are "neither terrorists nor pirates", Italy's Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said today. Bonino's remarks came ahead of the February 10 hearing of the case by India's Supreme Court, which asked Indian authorities to resolve all disputes arising out of the issue of invoking an anti-piracy law against marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone.

18:28Live! Zip the lip: Rahul asks Cong spokespersons to be careful making statements: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi asks party spokespersons to be careful while giving statements. On January 18 at the AICC meeting in Delhi Congress senior leader Mani Shankar Aiyar had mocked Narendra Modi's Prime Ministerial ambitions and said a place will be identified for the Gujarat Chief Minister to distribute tea at the venue.

"I promise you in 21st Century Narendra Modi will never become the Prime Minister of the country. ...But if he wants to distribute tea here, we will find a place for him," Aiyar said at the venue of the AICC meeting in Delhi.

mocked Narendra Modi's
Prime Ministerial ambitions and said a place will be identified for the
Gujarat Chief Minister to distribute tea here.
"I promise you in 21st Century Narendra Modi will never become the Prime
Minister of the country. ...But if he wants to distribute tea here, we
will find a place for him," Aiyar said at the venue of the AICC meeting
here.

The Asia-Pacific region accounted for 24% of the $1.538 trillion spent worldwide last year, according to an annual defense budgets review published by IHS Jane's on Feb. 4.

After five years of declines, global defense spending will rebound modestly to $1.547 trillion this year, the report forecast. Read more

17:48 Union Minister Jaipal Reddy is hosting a lunch for MPs, media professionals and advocates at his residence on Saturday. Reddy joked that on the menu was spicy cuisine from Telangana.

17:36Farooq Abdullah, Sharad Pawar in a huddle in Parliament : In Parliament today (for the few hours before it adjourned for the day), NCP chief Sharad Pawar and NC chief Farooq Abullah were seen having a conversation together at the Central Hall. Other MPs speculated that they are looking at deciding on the right time to walk out of the UPA. Others jokingly wondered who would get closer to Narendra Modi first.

17:32 BSP MP Prof SP Singh Baghel is expected to resign from the Rajya Sabha next month. Upset with Mayawati, Baghel is in touch with senior BJP leaders and is likely to contest as the BJP candidate from Agra. Up ahead this week are meetings with Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh.

Former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit has not been named in the FIR filed by the ACB in the CWG scam.

16:57Kejriwal directed ACB to file FIR in CWG scam : Arvind Kejriwal, today directed the Anti-Corruption Branch to lodge an FIR in the Rs 90-crore street light project for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in which a panel headed by a former CAG had indicted the then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

After a Cabinet meeting, senior Minister Manish Sisodia said the ACB has been told to conduct a thorough probe into the scam as there have been "strong findings" in it by CAG and Shunglu Committee.

"The ACB has been directed to conduct an independent and thorough investigation and take action. ACB will file FIR in the case. Our motive is not to target a particular person," Sisodia said.

Registration of an FIR is the first step in the filing of formal charges. Today's move was bound to needle its ally Congress.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal today moved the files relating to the preparations for the 2010 CWG to the Anti-Corruption Bureau, which means that an FIR could have been filed against Sheila Dikshit.

16:50I left Parliament in disgust today: Yashwant Sinha: "Today was the second day of the last session of the 15th Lok Sabha. The House assembled as usual at 11 am. The Speaker announced the Question Hour. Immediately, all hell broke loose and members from the Congress party, the supporting parties of the UPA and some others rushed into the well of the House and disrupted House proceedings. After a few minutes of this not unexpected drama, the Speaker adjourned the House to meet again at 12 noon."

"I will join Trinamool Congress tomorrow when the official announcement will be made and I will also vote for TMC candidates," Chowdhury, who is the brother of late Congress' Malda strongman A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury, told reporters in the presence of TMC all-India general secretary Mukul Roy and Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee.

The British former prime minister and Miss Deng, who is now divorced from Mr Murdoch, 82, spent time together without the media tycoon knowing, Vanity Fair said in a series of extraordinary allegations.

And it also disclosed the contents of a note in which Miss Deng, 45, wrote 'I'm so missing Tony', going on to talk about his 'good body', and 'really good legs' adding: 'I love his power on the stage.'

15:52Govt probing complaints in mega combat aircraft deal: The government is looking into the complaints against the procedure to determine the winner of multi-billion dollar combat aircraft deal, Defence Minister A K Antony today said while admitting that there was no money to sign such a big deal in this fiscal.

"There are complaints about the procedure of calculating the Life Cycle Cost and that issue is not yet settled. Before bringing the deal before the Cabinet Committee on Security for final approval, we would like to get clear on that aspect," he told a press conference in Delhi.

15:37Gates spends entire first day in office trying to install Windows 8.1: Bill Gates's first day at work in the newly created role of technology adviser got off to a rocky start yesterday as the Microsoft founder struggled for hours to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade.The installation hit a snag early on, sources said, when Mr. Gates repeatedly received an error message informing him that his PC ran into a problem that it could not handle and needed to restart. Read more

15:27 In its first chargesheet filed in July, the CBI accused seven senior policemen of murdering Ishrat and the others "in cold blood" and of planting an AK-56 at the scene of the shooting to portray the victims as terrorists. CBI sources say IB officer Rajinder Kumar provided the weapon.

The IB, however, says its offices have been wrongly chargesheeted.

15:23 This is the second chargesheet filed by the CBI. The other three IB officers charged, apart from Rajinder Kumar are P Mittal, MK Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede.

15:22Live! Ishrat Jahan case: Amit Shah not named in supplementary chargesheet : The supplementary chargesheet has been filed in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. IB officer Rajinder Kumar, who headed the Intelligence Bureau in Gujarat, and three
more officers have been named for abduction and conspiracy in the case. Ishrat Jahan, who was killed by state police officers 10 years ago.

Then home minister, and a close aide of Narendra Modi has not been named in the chargesheet.

15:14Connecting the terror dots: In shocking revelations, Swami Aseemanand claims though RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was not directly involved with the terror strikes, he was aware that such attacks were being planned. Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa finds out more. Read

14:57Adjourned in 15 minutes: how Parliament lost 6.75 crores in two days: The Lok Sabha ran for a mere 15 minutes today before raucous Andhra Pradesh lawmakers, shouting slogans in favour of and against the proposal to create Telangana, forced its adjournment for the day. The House of People was a bit luckier yesterday. It functioned for 34 minutes before Speaker Meira Kumar called it a day. Read more

14:43Why the AAP still matters: One reason why the Aam Aadmi Party is of such consuming interest to politically engaged desis is that it seems committed to pluralism without making caste and community identities central to its politics.

The Mandalization of Indian politics is a familiar theme and an important stage in the evolution of the republic, but the AAP seems to mark something of a departure from the politics of identity; it doesn't set out, ideologically, to perform India's social diversity.

14:37
Today, protesters marched from Jantar Mantar to Parliament Street demanding an anti-racial law that would deter discriminatory attack on people from north east. Leading a peaceful protest, the members of the group offered court arrest at the Parliament Street police station.

Nido, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, died last week after he was allegedly assaulted by a group of people in Southeast Delhi's Lajpat Nagar.

Police in the status report said the shopkeeper and his three accomplices beat up Nido after he paid Rs 7000 for breaking the shop's windowpane.

They also allegedly made fun of his hairstyle. The police said the accused were arrested under SC/ST Act and not under murder charges.

The three accused -- Sunder Singh, Pawan Farmania, Farman -- were produced before Metropolitan Magistrate Pawan Kumar on Tuesday.

14:14Delhi govt moves against Sheila Dikshit on CWG projects: In yet another move aimed at needling outside ally Congress, the AAP government today directed its Anti-Corruption Bureau to probe a number of Commonwealth Games related projects that were implemented during the reign of Sheila Dikshit.

The government has particularly asked ACB to probe the alleged irregularities in street light projects in which the Prime Minister-appointed Shunglu Committee had questioned certain decisions made by Dikshit.

"We will ensure thorough investigation of all cases of corruption in CWG projects," Law Minister Somnath Bharti said when asked about the government decision.

He said the ACB has been told to examine all cases of irregularities but maintained that the probe will not target "any particular individual".

13:37 The SIT is expected to look into why 241 of the 600 FIRs registered in the 1984 violence were reportedly closed by the police. The SIT will also inquire into allegations of evidence ignored by the police and expedite the process in cases where chargesheets were not filed despite sufficient evidence.

13:35Live! AAP asks Delhi LG to form SIT to probe 1984 anti-Sikh riots :
The Delhi cabinet asks the Lt Governor to form a Special Investigations Team (SIT) to probe the 1984 riots. Last week, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal discussed the matter with Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, whose approval is required for the constitution of the SIT. AAP minister Manish Sisodia says the SIT should be formed with police from outside the state.

13:29 Omar Abdullah tweets: Just been shown around Mumbai's new T2 terminal. Very very impressive, truly a world class piece of infrastructure.

13:17Interrogating the anti-graft platform: A pro-business anti-corruption programme can only have a short-run perspective. Over time, as it leads to inequity, slowdown in the economy, and social discontent, the rulers will have to turn authoritarian. Read more

However, it was not until in 2004, while researching an article for his portal on Indian cinema, Upperstall, that he discovered the director of both films was an American, Ellis R. Dungan.

He ended up writing an article about the director for the website, but thoughts about Mr. Dungan's adventures kept recurring as he puzzled over why an American would spend 15 years in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to make movies during the 1930s and1940s. The full story here.

Pragya, who was diagnosed with cancer last year and had been undergoing treatment at the Pandit Khushilal Ayurveda Hospital in Indore, was briefly shifted to Jawaharlal Nehru Cancer Hospital (JNCH) on Tuesday after her condition deteriorated.

"She was brought back to the Pandit Khushilal Ayurveda Hospital last evening", her relative Bhagwan Jha said.

He said the timing of the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan--which is done to find out the stage of cancer and its spread--will be finalised after securing permission from police since Pragya is in their custody.

Pragya was arrested by the Maharashtra police in connection with the Malegaon blasts of 2008. Later, the Madhya Pradesh police had arrested her in February 2011 for her alleged role in Sunil Joshi's murder.

Aiyar was reacting to the DMK, ADMK MPS who were rushing to the well of the Rajya
Sabha demanding justice for Tamil fishermen. An angry Aiyar told the MPs in Tamil "to dive in to the ocean" (to save Tamil fishermen).

The entire
house erupted in laughter when Aiyar danced for a second time before he took his seat. BJP MPs were seen provoking Aiyar to repeat
his dance.

Aiyar was last in the news for calling Arvind Kejriwal a political clown and earlier, saying that Narendra Modi would never be PM but the Congress would set up a stall for him to sell tea.

Presidential nominees to Rajya Sabha are to maintain decorum and decency.

12:16 On Wednesday, the Opposition had scuttled the introduction of the anti-communal violence bill in Rajya Sabha while the Telangana and caste-reservation issues brought proceedings in both Houses to a standstill.

Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari asked members not to troop into the Well who continued to disrupt proceedings over the Telangana bill.

When the din continued, he adjourned the House till 12 pm. Earlier in the day, parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath had urged the parties to help the House function.

Today, the RS has been adjourned till 2 pm, while the Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day.

11:56Rahul joins protesters against Nido's death, assures strict action: On Monday, Rahul Gandhi joined youth from the Northeast agitating to bring to book those involved in the killing of Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, and promised "very strict action" apart from setting up of a committee to look into the treatment meted out to people from the region.

Asserting that "what has happened was unacceptable", Rahul, while addressing the agitators at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, said "....You can expect a very strict action and detailed study done by a committee on the issues of north-easterners of this country. We are trying to move forward on that."

The central convener of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Somnath Tripathy, who flew in from Delhi yesterday, discovered as much. Tripathy, who reached a city hotel to read out the names of 12 AAP workers selected from Jharkhand to lead the Lok Sabha poll campaign in the state, was greeted with fury in the form of flying eggs and tomatoes. Read more

Then he proceeded to address a single individual who was present not at the Brigade but across the river.

The aspirant for Prime Minister told Mamata Banerjee, who was at her 14th-floor chamber at Nabanna, through a long-distance message everything that any chief minister would want to hear after the general election but not before polling is over.

Modi tried to convince Mamata that she could realise her dream of Bengal's progress only if there was a friendly government at the Centre.

11:26Cong's Seemandhra MPs seek no trust vote against PM:
In a huge embarrassment for the ruling Congress, its own MPs from Seemandhra have given notice for a non-confidence motion against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the plan to split Andhra Pradesh to create a separate Telangana state.

This evening, the union cabinet will review the controversial proposal amid protests by politicians on both sides of the divide. Read more

And yes, as expected, both houses of Parliament have been adjourned over the Telangana issue.

11:19 Telangana leaders to meet President Pranab Mukherjee at 3 pm today; the President will then meet Seemandhra leaders at 6 pm.

11:18India extends visa-on-arrival facility to 180 countries: In a significant step towards liberalization of the visa regime, the government on Wednesday cleared two initiatives: visa on arrival and electronic travel authorization for all countries barring eight "prior reference'' countries including Pakistan, Iran, Sri Lanka and China.

ETA will allow foreign travelers to apply for a visa from home and receive an online confirmation in five working days. Read the full story here.

11:15
The Delhi government has asked the anti-corruption bureau to probe a number of cases of corruption relating to alleged irregularities in Commonwealth Games projects.

The Shunglu panel set by the PM to probe the CWG case squarely blamed former CM Sheila Dikshit and MCD officials for irregularities.

10:32Chandrababu Naidu to meet Jayalalithaa in Chennai at noon: Just In: The Telugu Desam Partys N Chandrababu Naidu, who has kept everyone guessing about which way he will go in the impending Lok Sabha elections, will be meeting Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa at 12 noon today.

While Jayalalithaa has made no secret of her national ambitions, Naidu, in the past, has been at the helm of a non-Congress, non-BJP dispensation.

"We have decided to extend the visa-on-arrival facility to tourists from 180 nations. It will take 5-6 months for the respective departments to put the required infrastructure in place. We hope to implement this from the next tourist session beginning October," he said.

India currently offers visa-on-arrival to tourists from 11 countries like Finland, the Philippines, Singapore and Japan.

Firefighters scrambled to contain a blaze at a US nuclear waste plant in New Mexico, while underground staff were evacuated and some taken to hospital, officials said.

The blaze erupted yesterday on an underground vehicle carrying salt at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, the US Department of Energy (DoE) said in a statement.

"Emergency response teams are responding to an operational emergency" at the plant, which is used to dispose of radioactive waste left from making nuclear weapons.

"All underground personnel are accounted for and have been safely evacuated to the surface," it said, adding "There is no waste in the vicinity of the fire."

All waste handling operations have been suspended while "multiple employees" were transported to a local hospital for potential smoke inhalation after the blaze, which erupted around 11:00 am, it said.

Multiple explosions rocked Baghdad today, killing at least 34 people and sending plumes of smoke into the sky across the street from a major government building in a brazen reminder of the ability of insurgents to penetrate the heart of the capital.

The attacks come as al-Qaida-led militants are battling for control of mainly Sunni areas to the west in the first test of the Shiite-led government to maintain security in the country more than two years after the withdrawal of US troops.

The deadliest of today's attacks took place across the street from the high-rise building housing the Foreign Ministry, shattering the windows of nearby apartment buildings. Two parked car bombs went off simultaneously in different parking lots, killing at least 12 people, including three policemen, and wounding 22, a police officer said.

Shortly afterward, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a nearby falafel restaurant frequented by officials or visitors waiting for security escorts to take them inside the Green Zone, a walled-off area that houses the prime minister's office and the US and other foreign embassies.

Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who survived being shot in the head by the Taliban, was nominated for the World Children's Prize in Sweden today for championing education rights for girls.

"She is a child herself and she stands up for girls' rights to education in Pakistan, but also in the world as a whole," Liv Kjellberg, 15, a member of the international prize jury said.

Malala was nominated last year for the Nobel Peace Prize and won the European Union's Sakharov human rights prize for her crusade for the right of all children to an education. The 16-year-old, who now lives in Britain following extensive medical treatment, was shot by a Taliban gunman in 2012 over her outspoken views on education in her home region in northwest Pakistan.

The World Children's Prize -- also known as the "Children's Nobel Prize" -- was founded in 2000 and aims to raise awareness of children's rights in 60,000 schools in 110 countries through educational programmes which include studying champions of human rights and voting for the prize winners.

A third year B.Tech student at IIT Kanpur was found dead this morning inside his hostel room with officials at the institute saying that the case appeared to be one of suicide.

Officials at the premier technological institute said that the deceased student, identified as Manjunath (20), had been suffering from depression and was even taking assistance for the same.

This is the second instance at IIT, Kanpur, this year of a student being found dead under mysterious circumstances. On January 1, the body of a second year B.Tech student hailing from Andhra Pradesh was found near railway tracks here.

Manjunath, who was enrolled in the computer science stream, had lost use of his legs due to polio. He hailed from Raichur district of Karnataka.

IIT, Kanpur, Registrar RK Sachan said that the boy had lost his father in his childhood while, a few months back, his sister also passed away.

The Taliban are living in a "fantasy world" and their chances of achieving their objectives after Western troops leave Afghanistan are extremely low, a military think-tank expert said today.

The Afghan security forces are "thoroughly in control" of counter-insurgency, said Brigadier Ben Barry, senior fellow on land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

They should be able to successfully protect the April 5 presidential election, though with 11 candidates, it is difficult to predict whether the transfer of power will be smooth, he said.

The Taliban's military offencive in 2013 failed, while their attacks in Kabul had political but negligible security impact, Barry said.

"What we've got now is the Afghan security forces thoroughly in control of doing counter-insurgency and securing Afghanistan," he told AFP at the IISS's London headquarters after the launch of the think tank's main annual report.

The Olympic flame reached Sochi today, following a 65,000-kilometre route, the longest in the history of the games.

During the journey, the torch relay reached the North Pole, went to the top of Europe's highest mountain, plunged into the world's deepest lake and was even taken into space by Russian cosmonauts. The torchbearers included a 101-year-old man.

The relay generated genuine public enthusiasm, featuring famous cultural figures, athletes and other celebrities, and drawing big crowds across Russia.

But it also has seen some spectacular gaffes, with the flame flickering out on dozens of occasions and, in some cases, even engulfing the bearers.